Try our new research platform with insights from 80,000+ expert users

HPE 3PAR StoreServ vs IBM XIV comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Feb 2, 2025

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Categories and Ranking

HPE 3PAR StoreServ
Ranking in Modular SAN (Storage Area Network)
4th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
303
Ranking in other categories
NAS (10th), All-Flash Storage (16th)
IBM XIV
Ranking in Modular SAN (Storage Area Network)
11th
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
5.4
Number of Reviews
6
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of October 2025, in the Modular SAN (Storage Area Network) category, the mindshare of HPE 3PAR StoreServ is 10.2%, down from 10.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of IBM XIV is 1.6%, up from 1.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Modular SAN (Storage Area Network) Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
HPE 3PAR StoreServ10.2%
IBM XIV1.6%
Other88.2%
Modular SAN (Storage Area Network)
 

Featured Reviews

Muhammad Saqib - PeerSpot reviewer
Uninterrupted upgrades accelerate performance with good support
I would rate the solution eight out of ten. It should be noted that in Pakistan, some parts are not readily available, and we need to import them from Singapore or other countries. We encountered an issue with a customer where the midplane failed and was not available. We had to wait for several days for a replacement, even in a 24/7 support case. Additionally, we faced motherboard failures in the customer's environment, encountering two motherboard failures simultaneously. We obtained one motherboard immediately, yet had to wait ten days for another. These issues should have been resolved promptly given the 24/7 support level.
Ajith Kandaramage - PeerSpot reviewer
Good value for money but issues with modular scaling
IBM XIV's most valuable features are NVME, especially when it comes to de-duplication, compression, and responsiveness I've been using IBM XIV for two and a half years. IBM XIV is stable. IBM XIV's scalability is adequate for our requirements, but because it's modular, you can't scale to larger…

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"In the deployment of virtual servers, I can have a new VM up and running in 15 minutes, run the patches, then done. I routinely fire up base images that I have for my servers: Server 2008 R2, 2012 R2, and 2016. I routinely fire those base images up and do all the updates, then prep them again for cloning. With 3PAR, we definitely have the performance to do that. Those images I do keep on SSD just to have that performance to deploy a new VM."
"Provides High-Availability, security, and high performance"
"We also use dynamic optimization to go between tiers."
"We have our backups set up to replicate between two sites, then we also have our storage set up to replicate between two sites."
"With the new flash arrays, 3PAR has improved our performance."
"The solution is quite stable and scalable."
"They provide very good support for our mission-critical processes."
"HPE 3PAR StoreServ has been stable."
"IBM XIV's most valuable features are NVME, especially when it comes to de-duplication, compression, and responsiveness."
"The performance and robustness of the systems are very good."
"Installation is amazingly easy."
"Very easy to produce reporting data (Snaps). Very easy and fast for provisioning devices and Remote mirroring."
"As it spreads, a chuck of 1MB across the board means using all available spindles on the backend."
"Hands down, this is the easiest storage platform on the market to manage."
 

Cons

"The GUI interface could be improved. I have been having trouble with one issue in particular. If you look at the DC and DR, if there is a communication break and the link went down—so the data is not replicating from DC to DR—there is no way to find out how much data is ready for transmission. Only the size of the data that needs to be transferred after the link comes up. If the firewall link is down, there is no way of seeing how much data is waiting to be transferred. This is a weak point of 3PAR."
"It would also help if they integrate current technologies, newer technologies, and more efficient technologies, as time progresses. For example, integrate the fourth level of NAND devices."
"A lot of tasks, you have to manually set up. They need to already have them set up and working. Then, you can just go in and tweak them if you need to."
"We need additional enhancements to InfoSight, especially from a VM standpoint. Today, we can see in the Azure VM performance stats in 3PAR, but it is so huge, we can't just drill down on each and every VM and look at its performance."
"It's still an older architecture, you've got a lot of physical spinning disks. I would imagine more the memory-based computing is coming."
"We've started to see an issue with the older models that we have. We've had issues where facilities would have unscheduled power outages or scheduled power outages and the 3PARs weren't able to come up successfully. We actually had an incident recently where it wiped data that we didn't anticipate would be wiped."
"The tool needs improvement in the utilization report at the granular level."
"Sometimes control is rebooting and nobody knows why, so there are issues."
"I would rather have a web GUI served directly from the unit, and a CLI accessible directly through SSH."
"I encountered stability (performance) issues during enclosure or disk rebuild. Also some power supply issues due to malfunctions of ​circuits. Sometimes "internal" Snap sessions hang and consume pool capacity."
"Until the drive is replaced, the pool_resizing is locked."
"IBM XIV's scalability is adequate for our requirements, but because it's modular, you can't scale to larger requirements."
"This product was not a good fit for our organization as we have a ton of latency sensitive applications and XIV was not able to keep up with IO + latency demand."
"The change form synchronous mirroring to asynchronous (and vice versa) without reconfiguration from scratch would be helpful."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Our licensing cost are $32,000 annually."
"You need to properly assess your needs before buying the solution since there are chances of overpaying. The type of configuration that you choose can make the price go higher or lower."
"For the entire six node cluster and the two 7200 units plus the Brocade Fibre switches, we financed it through HPE Financial. It was $850,000. We leased that and paid it off in October of 2018."
"We don't pay for any licensing fees."
"Nowadays, from a storage point of view, there are so many vendors in the market. So cost is one of the factors that pushed us to go with HPE 3PAR. Cost-wise they're pretty competitive."
"We went with 3PAR because we have HP-UX systems. Since we already knew HP-UX, they offered us a significantly cheaper solution than the one that we had for storage."
"The SSD is a little bit expensive."
"The support for the solution is free for three years, then it is an additional cost. It is approximately $30,000 annually. The price includes a lot of equipment we have not only HPE 3PAR StoreServ."
"No-license-required policy, unlike others where you need a license for everything. Just pay once and forget about licenses."
"If you are going to use the product behind an SVC, IBM will price the units lower, since you are likely not to use any of the advanced copy services."
"We have a five-year total cost of ownership where we pay an initial amount and then annually for maintenance."
"Licensing is straightforward."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Modular SAN (Storage Area Network) solutions are best for your needs.
868,759 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Comparison Review

it_user182013 - PeerSpot reviewer
May 1, 2015
Measuring Up: EMC XtremIO and HP 3PAR
Leading up to EMC World 2015, IT Central Station asked how I would compare EMC XtremIO and HP 3PAR. Until recently, the flash storage conversation in my organization and many others has centered on XtremIO and Pure Storage, the leaders of the all-flash array (AFA) space. To that end, I've written a…
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
15%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Government
7%
No data available
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business72
Midsize Enterprise74
Large Enterprise170
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

What's the difference between HPE 3PAR StoreServ and HPE Primera?
HPE Primera has many great features but one of the best is that it is very easy to deploy. From an overall perspective, it is reliable, easy to set up, stable, and offers quality block storage. All...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for HPE 3PAR StoreServ?
It is expensive, however, when we compare it to the features provided by HPE, the price-to-performance ratio is very good.
Ask a question
Earn 20 points
 

Also Known As

HPE 3PAR Flash Storage, InServ, Storeserv, 3PAR Flash Storage, HP Enterprise Storage, 3PAR Flash Array, HP 3PAR Flash Storage
XIV
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Just Energy, Latisys, team AG, DreamWorks, BlueShore Financial, Erasmus MC
Celero, NaviSite, Technische Universit_t Mªnchen, Netflix Inc., Muhr und Bender KG, Pelephone Communications
Find out what your peers are saying about HPE 3PAR StoreServ vs. IBM XIV and other solutions. Updated: September 2025.
868,759 professionals have used our research since 2012.